Pleasant enough background music, not a high, low, or hook to be heard. In one ear, out the other. Sukierae, Part II.

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What I have heard sounds a lot like The Grateful Dead.

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I don't remember half the time if I'm hiding or I'm lost

Workingman's Dead on Xanax, maybe.

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How about it?

I'm just kidding. I don't know what that means.

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I don't remember half the time if I'm hiding or I'm lost

Betting that every song is a some variation of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJezD7hrN0k

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Soccer 1,2,3
Spanish Honor Society 1,2,3,4
Forensics 1,2,3,4

"Smiles with Nostrils"

"...no Hmong, go find some blacks"

Pretty much agree. It's fine, even pretty dang good but that's about it.

I guess the same can be said about Wilco as a whole.

It's pretty obviously intended to be the inverse of Star Wars, so now I'm going to go back and listen to that to see whether I appreciate noisy-to-a-fault in the wake of serene-to-a-fault. Maybe they should have been one double album.

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Or both albums on the same day;



WILCO lost me after they ran out of Jay Bennett material to release. Nobody in the band to challenge Tweedy and generate some creative spark. Best thing might be if he hooked back up with Jim O'Rourke. Or a UT reunion.

Can we agree on this for a Wilco album ranking?

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Summerteeth
Being There
Sky Blue Sky
The Whole Love
A Ghost Is Born
A.M.
Wilco (The Album)
Star Wars
Schmilco

I labored a little over A.M. versus Wilco (The Album). "Casino Queen"/"Box Full of Letters"/"Shouldn't Be Ashamed" is as fine a 1-2-3 punch as they've ever had (and arguably their most immediate and bullshit-free), but I've always been fond of the Feist duet, and "One Wing" was a good Nice Pleasant Wilco song before Tweedy wrote about twenty more. I ended up busting it down for "I'll Fight," which was just a crappy and plodding version of the far superior "On and On and On."

If Sukierae were a Wilco album it would be last.

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AM is too low. FOXTROT is too high.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot /Summerteeth
Being There
A Ghost Is Born
A.M.


only records i'm sufficiently versed in to rank.

re: A.M., so many better power pop records came out back then. if that had been Wilco's only record and Jay Bennett didn't join up and give us BT/ST/YHF....and WILCO became what it is a shell of today--not sure anyone other than Spencer Tweedy and Some Guy would ever listen to AM anymore.

There's a great record worth of material among the various Mermaid Avenue releases as well.

YHF -- calming commentary for commuting; makes traveling to and through airports less stressful (took a course in anger mgt from...)

i'd put sky blue sky above foxtrot, actually; but i really didn't dig "a ghost is born" as an album. "A.M." is a cool debut. but "being there" will always be my favorite. i think for pure bang for your buck, "summerteeth" is their most consistent effort.

Sky Blue Sky is terrific, and it bugged me when everyone was like "buhhh this is just dad rock." With A Ghost Is Born, Tweedy failed to overcome what Jay Bennett brought and turned out a rather lifeless album, but with Sky Blue Sky I think they finally figured out how to get back to basics and just make music. "Impossible Germany" is one of their three or four best songs. "On and On and On" is pretty high up there too and arguably their best closer, even ahead of "Reservations."

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I do like On and On and On and Impossible Germany and I recall the opener at least making me in interested in what comes next. I have Sky Blue Sky on vinyl, but not with me. Gonna soulseek it and give it a listen. And Walken is a good example of Tweedy's McCartney influence. I think. But I know fuck-all about the Beatles. Prefer the Kinks or Stones over the Beatles.

And isn't SBS the first Nels album? I was at the Auditorium theater shows when Nels first sat-in with Wilco. Nels was there with Red-Headed Stranger, iirc. I think he's on the version of 'At Least That's What You Said' and "Handshake Drugs" from those September shows, whatever year that was. Killa renditions. Sick guitar work.

Agreed on Summerteeth. Listening to it (and BT and Mermaid Avenue...etc) always makes me wonder what else Tweedy-Bennett could've produced, had they stayed together. If Tweedy hadn't gone BigFan and decided he wanted to be the only one with say in the band.

It sags a bit in the middle ("Side With the Seeds," "Shake It Off," "Please Be Patient With Me") in the sense that they're good songs in and of themselves but maybe aren't the best for listening straight through. The first and third thirds of the album are among their best work ever.



JESUS JUST FINE

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